| Shoot the Piano Player | |
|---|---|
The original theatrical poster. |
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| Directed by | François Truffaut |
| Produced by | Pierre Braunberger (producer) |
| Written by | David Goodis (novel Down There) François Truffaut (adaptation) and Marcel Moussy (adaptation) François Truffaut (dialogue) |
| Starring | Charles Aznavour Marie Dubois Albert Rémy |
| Music by | Georges Delerue |
| Cinematography | Raoul Coutard |
| Editing by | Claudine Bouché Cécile Decugis |
| Distributed by | Cocinor |
| Release date(s) | 25 November 1960 |
| Running time | 80 minutes (UK) 92 minutes (USA) |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
Shoot the Piano Player (French: Tirez sur le pianiste, aka Shoot the Pianist) is a 1960 French film directed by François Truffaut, starring Charles Aznavour.
The film is loosely based on the novel Down There by David Goodis.
Contents |
A washed-up classical pianist, Charlie Koller/Eduard Saroyan (Charles Aznavour), bottoms out after his wife's suicide — stroking the keys in a Parisian dive bar. The waitress, Lena (Marie Dubois), is falling in love with Charlie, who it turns out is not who he says he is. When his brothers get in trouble with gangsters, Charlie inadvertently gets dragged into the chaos and is forced to rejoin the family he once fled.
The film shares the novel's bleak plot about a man hiding from his shattered life by doing the only thing he knows how to do, while remaining unable to escape the past. However, Truffaut's work resolves itself into both a tribute to the American genre of literary and cinematic noir and a meditation on the relationship between art and commercialism.
Truffaut's stylized and self-reflexive melodrama employs the hallmarks of French New Wave cinema: extended voice-overs, out-of-sequence shots and sudden jump cuts.